Whoop, whoop !

The best Reuben sandwich on the planet Earth is served along with two carrot sticks and a scoop of terrific potato salad plus a slice of dill pickle at the Goose Hollow Inn, in Portland, Oregon. Thank John Elwood "Bud" Clark for that and for making his tavern a beloved institution in the Rose City, right up there with Powell's Books. In 1967 Bud opened his tavern and over the years built a diverse clientele of Portlanders that included doctors, lawyers, mill hands, college students, artists, anarchists, you-name-it.

I became a regular in 1975 and when a movement started as a joke in 1985 to run Bud as a candidate for Mayor of Portland, I signed on. The joke turned into serious business as patrons of the Goose were organized into an army of canvassers who spread out through the city to carry the word about our favorite bar-keep.

I was working a district in southeast Portland when I entered a large trailer park and knocked on the door of one of the units.  The door flew open and I was confronted by a plus-size matron who cut loose on me with a loud dose of her displeasure at being disturbed.  Her anger grew more intense until she finally paused to catch her breath which gave me a chance to say to her (as a way of giving her more fuel for outrage) "I suppose asking to use your restroom is completely out of the question?"  I stepped back expecting a bigger explosion but her demeanor suddenly changed. In a calm, almost kind voice she said to me, "Do you really have to go?" I stuttered out something like, "No, no I'm OK...sorry to have disturbed you and be sure to vote for Bud Clark."

She apparently did because Bud won in a landslide and went on to serve two terms before retiring from public life. His victory made national news and he even appeared on Johnny Carson.  Johnny got Bud to demonstrate an unusual verbal tic: sometimes, for no apparent reason, Bud would add a little, "Whoop, whoop!" to the end of declarative sentences; it drove many of his staff members nuts. We must forgive that small idiosyncrasy because Bud Clark created the world's greatest Reuben sandwich.